Kettlebell Fat Loss Circuit

This article is going to be discussing how you can effectively incorporate a kettlebell fat loss circuit to your training program to boost fat loss. Kettlebell fat loss circuits are a highly effective tool for fat loss when used correctly and will give you an extra edge. This is for a very specific reason, which I will get to in a moment. First, I’d like to go over some things when it comes to fat loss.

When it comes to fat loss, it’s commonly known that the name of the game is to burn more calories than you consume. This simple fact alone is the reason why diet is the most important factor when it comes to fat loss. After the diet is taken care of, resistance training should be the foundation of training for fat loss. There are a few reasons for this. First, we want to preserve the muscle we already have so that we don’t lose it while dieting. Second, muscle in itself is a fat burner. The more muscle someone has on their body, the harder the body has to work to maintain that muscle. What’s more, resistance training elevates the metabolism even after the workout is over, cardio does not do this. In one case study, it was shown that the metabolism was raised for 38 hours after the resistance workout was completed! That’s a lot.

When it comes to training for fat loss, what we’re trying to do is create a workout structured around exercises that create a high metabolic demand. This means intense, hard, and often. We want exercises that involve more than one muscle group (preferably a full body workout) and will generate lactic acid. This will give us the elevated metabolism after the workout that we’re looking for. Kettlebell exercises, just by their very nature, usually require you to use more than one muscle group. When done in a fat loss circuit, they keep the heart rate elevated, raising the intensity of the exercise, and incorporate all the things discussed thus far. Kettlebell fat loss circuits, when added to a training program, will speed up fat loss tenfold.

This is a good fat loss circuit. For the most part, I like his selection of exercises. Here are some things I’d like to go over:

1. His use of Turkish Get-Ups. I love this exercise and I don’t see it used that often. The whole body is involved in this exercise, but mainly it’s a core killer! Very functional and a high metabolic demand exercise.

2. The swings to transition between each exercise with. The glutes are being activated, the core, shoulders, etc. However, I would have just used a two-handed swing instead of one-handed and focused mostly on activating those glutes and squeezing them very hard at the top.

3. I like the use of thrusters. Thrusters are another exercise I am quite fond of. Again, this is another exercise that is creating a high metabolic demand. The whole body is involved in this exercise. One thing to remember is to use that power getting out of the bottom to help press the kettlebell over your head.

4. I don’t mind the pick of windmill for an exercise; I just don’t particularly care for this exercise. Again, this is incorporating more than one muscle group, giving us that higher metabolic demand we’re going for. If it were me, though, I would have just switched it out for a swing catch.

This particular circuit would give great results when done 2-3x a week on top of an already existing muscle building program. The reason I wouldn’t suggest just using this as a foundation for resistance training is the fact that kettlebell fat loss circuits aren’t necessarily muscle builders. What I would personally do is have someone do heavy weight lifting with barbells and then replace any steady-state cardio with a kettlebell fat loss circuit. Steady-state cardio, to me, is inefficient. There was a case study done where overweight individuals were put into three groups consisting of diet only, diet plus aerobics, and diet plus aerobics plus weight training. In a 12 week period, the diet group lost 14.6 pounds of fat, the diet plus aerobic group lost 15.6 pounds of fat, and the diet plus aerobics plus weight training lost 21.2 pounds of fat. Only one pound extra than the diet only group! You better believe that elevated metabolism was factoring in. Why waste time for only one pound of extra fat loss when you can be incorporating kettlebell fat loss circuits into your training and watch the fat melt right off of you?